


Lindsay Lauren

by missema



Series: Sacraments [7]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Coma, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Family, Meet the Family, Post SR1, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 17:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3538148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missema/pseuds/missema
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just after the explosion that killed Alderman Hughes, Troy visits Elle in the hospital.  He meets her cousin April and reflects on the events that led them to this point.  Post SR1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lindsay Lauren

There were flowers in her room already, but Troy brought more every time he came to visit. He never wrote a card for them, fearing that someone else might read them, so he always told Elle what he wanted to say in the card while he stood over her bed. The elderly nurse on duty in the evenings knew him on sight after a week, and he didn't tell anyone else his name or why he was visiting her.

Elle was out of intensive care, but they were still following up treatment for the burns she sustained. The doctors speculated that the force of the explosion pushed her into the water and away from the fire, so her burns weren't as extensive as they could have been. One of Hughes' men hadn't been so lucky. The bastard lingered in the burn ward, covered from head to foot and doped up to keep the constant pain away. The others had all perished. Troy went to interview him before he died, and his wounds were a gruesome sight, even for him. 

The interview had gone well, at least for Troy, not so much for the police department, who were hell-bent on blaming Elle for the explosion on the boat. Officially, they had no leads, but the general feeling at the station was that she'd tried to kill Hughes and her bomb had gone off too early. Only he and a few other officers knew that wasn't the case, though no one but him cared about the truth. Troy talked to the former bodyguard, and found out that Hughes had intended to kill Elle, but that he'd reconsidered when she said she was working with the police. 

"The girl said, 'my boyfriend is the undercover officer in the Saints. I'm working with him, and the department. If I die here, he'll know you're responsible.' Hughes didn't know what to say after that. She was mad, but we had her surrounded. Boss gave the sign for us to hold off. Don't know what he was planning to do next."

The man had no doubt that Hughes was still going to try to find a way to get rid of her, but her mention of cooperation with the police gave him pause. While he was still trying to come up with some way to hold her, the bomb had gone off.

Troy knew Julius planted that bomb and that knowledge fueled all the rage within him, kept him from breaking down completely. It was Julius' way of stopping Elle from whatever it was he imagined she was going to do - cooperate with the police to bring him down, general betrayal, take over the Saints - Troy wasn't sure which scenario the old man imagined. It didn't matter. Julius all but admitted it to him when he finally answered Troy's phone calls. "What was done had to be done. Don't try to find me." The number hadn't worked when Troy tried to call it again. Her probably had a burner that Troy couldn't track, but damn if he wasn't going to try when he a chance.

He wanted answers, but all Troy got was more questions with every turn. Hughes was no big loss to him personally, but the city was reeling after losing him, Mayor Winslow and Chief Monroe. To them, Elle didn't matter, but to him, she was the only person of import that wasn't still up and walking around. He was much less inclined to feel bad about Hughes once his interview with the hired muscle concluded.

The goon had taken a good look at Troy before he left the hospital room, while his head was still bent over his notebook, recording observations. "You the undercover cop boyfriend?" he'd asked.

"Yeah, that's me." Troy saw no point in denying it to this man, although he didn't like the injured man. He was an extension of Hughes, even after the man was dead, and in Troy's mind this dying man was the physical embodiment of the reason why the woman he loved wouldn't answer him when he said her name.

"Thought so. You seem familiar. I remember when you came to ask Hughes for pardons. He was lying, telling you they'd get them. He was going to hang all of you out. Say you conspired with those gangbangers. 'Went native' was the way he put it." The man gave a wheezy chuckle. "You're better off now, except for your girl." He laughed again. "Is she dead?" 

"No." Troy replied, not volunteering anything else.

"Ha. Tough bitch." The man seemed to think on it for a minute and then added. "No way that explosion made her prettier. You can do better."

Troy had said nothing as he left, but his hands were clenched into hard fists even after an elevator ride down to the parking lot so he could have a cigarette. The man would later die of his wounds, and Troy knew they were extensive, but that hadn't been much comfort when he wanted to go back and throttle him with his bare hands. He wish the asshole had burned, like Angelo, so he could light his cigarette off his stinking corpse. 

That wasn't this day. He was here to see Elle, on one of his regular visits. The memory of the interview brought fury back to him, but Troy tamped it down. He didn't want to go see her until he got himself under control, but it was harder these days. Everything was more difficult without her around, even with her long silences and their infrequent meetings outside of the church. God, he just missed Elle, more than he could properly express. Troy could hear Julius' words echoing in his mind "what was done had to be done.", but that was just another lie the old man told to excuse his actions.

What was done had Elle indefinitely hospitalized, and here he was, sorry and sad, delivering flowers to her comatose form once again. Gift shop flowers that would likely die without her ever seeing them, because he'd been bringing them for weeks and there had been no change, but the doctors assured him that it was encouraging that she wasn't getting worse. Troy would take whatever hope they could offer him.

It was later than his normal visiting time when he got there, but the same nurse was still working. Troy walked past her as she made her way around the on duty desk. She smiled at his back as he went by, opening the door to Elle's room soundlessly. When he closed it, he leaned against the door, flowers still clutched in his hand, eyes closed. The machines beeped regularly, but there was nothing else to indicate that she was alive.

When he opened his eyes, Troy busied himself putting the flowers down. The oldest of the bouquets had been cleared out already, but he checked the water in all that remained. One he didn't recognize, bright yellow daisies with a teddy bear, had a card. He reached out to flip it up and read the names when the door opened behind him and he spun around.

A woman came in, holding a cup of coffee and headed for the chair next to Elle's bed. She didn't notice him at first, but then stopped and smiled at him. "You must be Troy. I thought all those flowers had to be from you."

She wasn't tall, but she projected a stature of importance, one of command. Her hair was short, falling to her chin in a straight line of dark hair. The woman wasn't heavyset but had a thick waist and wide hips. There was a tiredness about her, but she didn't seem weary or beaten, just exhausted. But then she smiled at him, and he recognized her just from the similarities between her and Elle. She had to be Elle's cousin. 

"Yeah, that's me. Are you April?" he asked.

"Nice to meet you." she said and extended her hand to him, he shook it and then let her sit down in the only chair. "I'm surprised I've never seen you here before. The nurse says you come often."

"As much as I can."

"I'm sure that Lindsay appreciates it." April said, smiling at him.

"Lindsay?" Troy sounded his utter bewilderment, even to his own ears. "Her name's Lindsay? I always called her Elle."

To his surprise, April chuckled. "Oh yeah, she goes by Elle, I suppose though I've never called her that. It's actually Lindsay Lauren, but she never liked it. Her mama used to call her..." she stopped and looked over at Troy. "You know about her mama, right? Well, she was deaf and always signed her name like this." She stopped talking and made the the letter 'L' and then tapped her heart with two fingers.

"Anyway, that's where it comes from. I don't think anyone has really called her Lindsay Lauren in years. I stopped because when she first came back with me, I didn't want to upset her in case she ran away again. She had such a hard time after her mama died." April said, talking more to herself than Troy.

"I thought you would have noticed that her bracelet doesn't say 'Jane Doe' anymore, Mr. Detective."

"I hadn't looked." he said. He got the feeling April was trying to draw him out, but he was in too bad of a mood to answer questions or talk. Part of him resented that she was there, interrupting his time with Elle. She knew her so well, in a way he never would. He hadn't even known her real name, but then again, he knew it didn't matter.

What they had mattered more than what was on her birth certificate or anything official. She called herself Elle, and now that he knew the story behind it, Troy understood. Her past was a complicated story that he hadn't heard the half of and doubted that he ever would know it all. He loved her, no matter what she called herself. Let Lindsay be the name the people that didn't know her used, the name on her bracelet in the hospital. She would always be Elle to him, until she wanted him to call her something else.

"It's lieutenant now." he told April absently, coming back to their conversation. Troy came back to her after staring at Elle for several long seconds as he thought over her name in his mind. 

"A promotion? Congratulations. I'm sure you earned it."

"I'm not so sure I did." Troy told her.

April shook her head at him, scolding with just that one motion. "You didn't do this to her. She told me you loved her, that you tried to keep her out of all that mess up on the row."

"Yeah, I tried as much as I could. I think we both trusted the wrong people when it came to that." Troy told her. He was almost confessional as he said it, but stopped himself from saying more to April. She wasn't part of this, even if she was Elle's closet relative. Officially the investigation was still ongoing, and he couldn't say anything else, but mostly he didn't want to throw around suspicion yet. Maybe in the future he might find an ally in her, someone that could listen as he tried to riddle out everything that went wrong, but that wasn't now. When he put Julius behind bars, Troy would tell April everything. Hopefully Elle too, if she ever woke up.

"Don't feel bad. We all do that. Even I feel guilt from time to time, wondering why I didn't do more for her, or keep on her about getting jobs in schools. But our lives are ours to live for good or ill. Just seems like some people have a harder time than others. Like poor Lindsay; it's almost like fate wants to keep her down."

Troy looked over at April holding Elle's hand, cupping the long fingers into her own brown fist. She covered Elle's hand with both of hers, as if she were trying to comfort the comatose woman. Elle lay there not moving beneath the touch, her hair braided into the familiar cornrows over a completely serene face, so that she looked both like a stranger and the woman he knew. April must have been the one doing her hair, keeping it neat and braided as she lay there. Something about that realization made his breath catch in his chest, a too hard hurt that stung at him.

"Now that we've met," April began, "I wonder if I could ask you to do something for me? It concerns Elle here."

Troy noticed that she seemed unable to make up her mind as to what she wanted to call her cousin, so he asked about that first. "What do you call her?"

"Lil bit." April answered absently. "It's just one of those things. She's always been slender, but six foot tall women aren't little, even when they are thin." She smiled as she said the name, but it was aimed at Elle, not him. "Anyway, she's got a storage unit that I'm not going to be able to pay for. Not one of those big ones or anything, but it's mostly her mother's things. I can keep it at my house so that's not a problem, but I wanted to know if you wanted anything out of there."

Troy didn't have to think as he answered, "Yes. I'd like to take a look. I can take care of her things, if you don't have the room." 

April did smile at him this time. "We can see what's over there first before you commit yourself to anything. Might just be junk. Can't say lil bit was a pack rat, but you never know. The police gave me back the spare key a couple days ago, so they obviously went through it and didn't think there was anything important."

He vaguely remembered that, but he hadn't been part of it. If he recalled the report right, her storage unit was the size of a broom closet and hadn't turned up anything. They'd done it without him, quick and efficient and noted in the report later that it was mostly things that hadn't even belonged to the suspect, family items from both deceased parents. He didn't know if he was the person to go through that with April, but if she was asking, he wasn't going to back out.

"Sure, we can go over one evening."

April got up and he dug out a card from his wallet to give to her. "Call me if you need anything else to do with Elle." he said.

"Thank you." April leaned over and kissed Elle on the forehead, squeezed her hand and whispered something to her as a goodbye. Troy tried to give her some privacy, looking at his watch or down at his feet while she did, but April paid him no mind until she got to the door.

"For what it's worth, I think the two of you will find your way together again. It might not be easy, but hardly anything is. She cared about you a great deal, and it's obvious that you feel the same for her. Don't let this," she waved her hand at the hospital in general, "get you down."

"I hope you're right, April." Troy said.

"Me too!" April laughed, the sound filling the room and making it feel less lonely. "Get some rest and I'll call you when I can find the time to get to that storage unit."

He waited until he couldn't see April out of the tiny window any longer and then turned back to Elle. Then he sat down in the chair vacated by her cousin and took up her hand. There was nothing more for him to say that night, but he knew she wouldn't mind the silence.


End file.
